A wonderful thing happened this week: my 14 y/o son, Tyler, asked me out on a date. Amazing as that is (amazing because holy cow - he was not only willing, but ASKING to be seen in public with me!) what impressed me even more is that he wanted to go see Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List. Well, you already know that a movie like The Bucket List is right up my alley, so I agreed. We went and saw it last night.

For those of you not familiar, a bucket list is a list of all the things you want to do before you kick the bucket. The movie was great fun and had a great message, but greater was the revelation I had walking out of the theater: What I’ve been asking you to do this week is write your Bucket List. No wonder you’re all so quiet.

As I see it, there’s not much difference between writing down what you really want in life and writing a Bucket List. They are both reflections of what we really value. But we treat them very differently, don’t we?

Writing a list of the things that you really want in life is difficult because we tend to censor ourselves by considering whether what we want is possible. We censor due to fear, approval of others, and a whole host of other factors.

But when you’re faced with your mortality, it’s a whole horse of a different color. What we truly value, what we want more time to be, do and have becomes crystal clear. Suddenly, we don’t have time to care whether it’s possible or if others approve, and any fears we might have had most likely pale in comparison to the big fear staring us in the face.

It’s certainly not a new concept to live like you were dying, but it’s not common, either. If successful people across the board tell us they are doing what they love, then could it be possible that these people have approached their lives with a Bucket List mentality? Could this be how they ‘felt the fear and did it anyway’? Could it be that what truly successful people and people creating a Bucket List have in common is that they are acutely aware of what they value in life and pursue it in spite of their fears and others’ opinions?

Let me leave you with a quote from Bill Strickland (author of Make the Impossible Possible):

An authentic life is not something we pursue, it’s something that must be created out of the passion and values that matter to us each and every day. “Now” is the only solid reality you can count on. Now is when you build a future that matters.

If you’re having trouble determining what is really important to you, what you really value, what you really want to be, do and have in this life, maybe it’s time to write your own Bucket List. Then, set out to cross them all off the list.